WVPB’s Randy Yohe To Be Inducted Into W.Va. Broadcasting HOF 

As a student at the prestigious University of Missouri – Columbia, Randy Yohe dreamed of becoming a cameraman for college basketball and traveling with ESPN. But a required class put him in front of the camera to do a story.  

“I did, and they liked me, and I liked it. And so I just started in at the television station, and I got hooked,” Yohe said. 

That was more than 40 years ago.  

Later this year, he and six other radio and television broadcasters will be inducted into the West Virginia Broadcasting Hall of Fame. 

“I’m humbled and proud, and you know, I just figured that I’ve lived in West Virginia now more years than I lived anywhere else I’ve ever lived combined, so I guess I’m an official West Virginian,” Yohe said. 

After college and an on-air stint in Savannah, Georgia, his career in West Virginia began in 1988. He went from WSAZ-TV to WOWK-TV and now West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Marshall University, where he’s an adjunct journalism professor. 

“Who would have thought that a born feature reporter would become the government reporter for West Virginia Public Broadcasting? But I’ve loved it,” Yohe said. 

As for his foray into teaching, “I was hired to teach them the way I learned to report, and so I’m teaching broadcast journalism. I’m teaching students to do TV packages, to do radio reports, to do the things that I did and in the way that I learned them, although I’m learning as much from them,” he said.  

“I’ve got a great department, and I’m proud that every senior in my class that just graduated has gotten a job in TV.” 

The thing that’s great about broadcast journalism, Yohe said, is that it’s something different every day.  

“Oftentimes it’s a breaking news piece that can just be thrown right at you, and boom, you have to be a quick study, you have to be a tight writer, and you’re learning something new every day, and you know, you’re an expert with it by 4 or 5 or  6 o’clock, and at 7o’clock you forgot it and you’re having dinner, and then the next morning you’re starting again,” he said.  

Along the way, he said, he hopes he’s made a difference, maybe motivated people to do something or try something they wouldn’t have before. The one thing he’s learned is that everybody has a story. 

“It’s all about stories, and it’s all about people. It’s not about things or numbers. It just has to be about the people.  

The 2026 West Virginia Broadcasting Hall of Fame inductees are: Jim Damron, Susan Nicholas, Randy Yohe, Alan Dye, Michele Crist, Will Shumate, and Dave Allen. The ceremony will be held Oct. 27 at the Museum of Radio and Technology in Huntington.